In general, a liquid crystal display device is widely used as a display for portable electronic equipment such as a portable telephone, a television, a personal computer, or the like. Generally, the liquid crystal display device has excellent viewability from the front, but has a narrow viewing angle. Thus, various considerations for widening the viewing angle have been performed. As one of the considerations, a configuration in which a member for controlling a diffusion angle of light emitted from a display body such as a liquid crystal panel is provided on a viewing side of the display body is proposed. The member for controlling the diffusion angle of light is referred to as a light diffusion member below.
The following PTL 1 discloses a light diffusion sheet in which a groove having a V-shaped cross-section is provided in a light diffusion layer, and a light absorptive layer is provided at a portion of the groove. Transparent sheets formed from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are disposed on a light incoming side and the light outgoing side of the light diffusion layer in the light diffusion sheet. A portion of light which has been vertically incident to the light diffusion layer is totally reflected by a wall surface of the groove, and then is emitted. Thus, light emitted from the light diffusion sheet is diffused.
The following PTL 2 discloses that an optical compensation film which contains a liquid crystal compound formed from a discotic compound is disposed between a liquid crystal cell and a polarization layer, in order to improve contrast in a liquid crystal display device of the twisted-nematic (below abbreviated to TN) mode.